The event will take place at the Opeongo Seniors Centre, 7pm on August 23rd. Doors will open at 6:30pm and admission is FREE.

Copies of Creating Kashubia will be available for purchase through the Wilno Heritage Society ($30). The event will be hosted by the Madawaska Valley Public Library, Sean Conway and the Wilno Heritage Society.

History, Memory, and Identity in Canada's First Polish Community

By Joshua C. Blank

A groundbreaking work that looks at the changing ways in which Canada’s first Polish community views itself.

In recent years, over one million Canadians have claimed Polish heritage - a significant population increase since the first group of Poles came from Prussian-occupied Poland and settled in Wilno, Ontario, west of Ottawa in 1858. For over a century, descendants from this community thought of themselves as Polish, but this began to change in the 1980s due to the work of a descendant priest who emphasized the community’s origins in Poland’s Kashubia region. What resulted was the reinvention of ethnicity concurrent with a similar movement in northern Poland. Read more>